Episode
👶 Bracing for depopulation: My chat (+transcript) with 'After the Spike' coauthor Dean Spears
- Published
- Aug 22, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 1983
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Summary
My fellow pro-growth/progress/abundance Up Wingers, Global population growth is slowing, and it’s not showing any signs of recovery. To the environmentalists of the 1970s, this may have seemed like a movement in the right direction. The drawbacks to population decline, however, are severe and numerous, and they’re not all obvious. Today on Faster, Please! — The Podcast , I talk with economist and demographer Dean Spears about the depopulation trend that is transcending cultural barriers and ushering in a new global reality. We discuss the costs to the economy and human progress, and the inherent value of more people. Spears is an associate professor of economics at Princeton University where he studies demography and development. He is also the founding executive director of r.i.c.e., a nonprofit research organization seeking to uplift children in rural northern India. He is a co-author with Michael Geruso of After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People . In This Episode * Where we’re headed (1:32) * Pumping the breaks (5:41) * A pro-parenting culture (12:40) * A place for AI (19:13) * Preaching to the pro-natalist choir (23:40) * Quantity and quality of life (28:48) Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation. Where we’re headed (1:32) . . . two thirds of people now live in a country where the birth rate is below the two children per two adults level that would stabilize the population. Pethokoukis: Who are you and your co-author trying to persuade and what are you trying to persuade them of? Are you trying to persuade them that global depopulation is a real thing, that it's a problem? Are you trying to persuade them to have more kids? Are you trying to persuade them to support a certain set of pro-child or pro-natalist policies? Spears:…